Progression
by The Little Ripper
Summary: A series of drabbles written for Fitzsimmons Week on Tumblr. A timeline of Jemma and Leo from their first meeting to their present situation. (Rating may be subject to change.)
1. reach a little higher, part 1

**So it's currently Fitzsimmons Week on Tumblr, and for that, I'm writing a series of drabbles based on the prompts, with all of them part of a timeline of Fitz and Simmons' life from the Academy to present time. The day 1 story is told in two parts, and kind of serves as a prologue. Part 1 is Fitz-centric, and part 2 is Jemma-centric.**

**Hope you guys like it.**

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_**Day 1: Stargazing**_

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**reach a little higher: leo**

The door creaks only slightly, but his head still whips around in search of any approaching shadows. There are none, thankfully. He doesn't hear any approaching footsteps either; so he swings the door wide open to let himself in and drops his bag unceremoniously as he enters the kitchen. He goes straight for the freezer, then pulls out the ice tray, empties half of it into a small plastic bag, and holds the bag of ice up to his face.

In the morning, his mother is going to notice the ice is gone, and she's going to see the dark ring around his eye when he comes down for breakfast. But for now, in the dead of the night, it's just Leo and his makeshift ice pack.

It wasn't like this was a rare occurrence for him anyway. He was used to the bullying. At this point, the only part about it that he couldn't stomach was the look on his mother's face whenever she saw the physical evidence of his loneliness and isolation at school. But other than that? He'd long resigned himself to his status as nerdy punching bag.

What would you expect, after all, when you're two months shy of fifteen and graduating secondary school at the top of your class?

When the ice melts, Leo empties the plastic bag into the sink, and loads the rest of the ice in the tray into the plastic bag and brings it back up to his bruised eye and cheek. The silence and darkness of the house unnerves him, so he leaves the kitchen, ice in hand, and steps out into the garden and the cool Glasgow air.

Apart from the occasional barking dog and passing car, it's quiet outside too. But this quiet is more peaceful, less eerie. He takes a deep breath and lets the cold air enter his lungs, takes a moment to savor the breeze on his face, before lying down on the grass.

He lives in a small town, where hardly anything stays open past 10PM, so there's no artificial light to hinder his view of the stars. He remembers being six years old and begging his mother to take him to the library, so he could check out big, heavy books on constellations. He'd bring them out to the garden at night, flashlight in hand, using them as his guide to finding patterns, understanding the shapes in the night sky. He'd built his first telescope when he was ten.

Sometimes he'd imagine himself inventing some sort of jetpack, one that could fly him away from his little town, from his misery, and he'd fly up to the stars and trace them with his fingers.

It's impossible, he knows. He knows that a mere jetpack won't take him to the stars; and that they'd be too big and burn too bright to approach. But he still thinks about it. He still dreams about leaving.

_Just a few more months,_ he reminds himself. _A few more months and you'll be off to university, you'll leave them in the dust. You'll leave them all behind._

And maybe it won't be to the stars, but it'll still be far away.

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	2. reach a little higher, part 2

**_Day 1: Stargazing_  
**

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**reach a little higher: jemma**

It feels strange.

She's surrounded by students her age, but they're also _her _students. While she worked on her first PhD, she was earning extra cash by tutoring the undergrad and graduate students. At seventeen, her knowledge was years ahead of her peers, and while it was fulfilling to use said knowledge to help them, it created a divide as well.

It wasn't like her experience prior to her university years, where she'd been ignored or even shunned by her classmates. Now, people looked up to her, and it gave her an unintentional air of superiority that intimidated students her age. They may respect and admire her, but they never treated her as their equal. She was still different, an _Other_, and being an Other could be lonely.

She takes a sip of beer and watches two boys from the freshman class argue as they attempted to set up one of the telescopes. One of them was her student, a student who hadn't been very subtle in conveying his interest in her during their study sessions. He had invited her to the Stargazing Night and, being uninterested in _him_, politely declined. Afterwards she'd been invited by a few of her female students, and only then did she decide to go.

It was the right decision, Jemma thinks, even if she did have to deflect the occasional advance from her student (David, was it?). It was a lovely night for stargazing. Across the field were tents pitched up by students, small lamps scattered around to provide light, and the girls who'd invited her were good company. It was also her first time attending a campus event that had no lectures or professors, nothing academic-related.

It was a shame, she thought, that this might be the only event she'd attend.

Her parents, while proud of their daughter and her genius, had gotten impatient waiting for their daughter to finish her education; never mind the fact that she was only seventeen and, typically, would still just be _thinking_ about university. They had thought that when Jemma chose to pursue Biochemistry in university that she would then go to medical school, become a doctor. Instead, when her undergrad had ended, Jemma had opted to stay in school and earn her doctorate.

They had agreed, given that she was still sixteen at the time and most medical programs, while more than impressed with her accomplishments, had been hesitant to take her in because of her age. But as Jemma's list of achievements grew longer, medical schools had slowly become more open to having her in their programs, some even offering scholarships.

The truth was that Jemma didn't want to be a doctor, not a medical one at least. Part of the reason she decided to pursue a PhD was because it bought her time—time to think about and to decide what she _did_ want to be.

And now her time was running out. As soon as she finishes with her dissertation, her parents will be breathing down her neck again, pushing her to choose a program, to add an M.D. to the end of her name. It sounds like the right way to go, in theory. But to Jemma, it just doesn't feel… right.

She does want to help people. She wants to save lives. But at the same time she doesn't want to be confined to white walls and a pager. Jemma wants more than that. What good is living in a world, after all, if you can't explore it, if you can't search for new discoveries?

What she doesn't know is how she's going to do both.

"Look, it's a shooting star!"

Jemma's head whips up in surprise to catch the tail-end of the shooting star. She smiles and closes her eyes. She doesn't believe in making wishes, but tonight is a carefree night, so it wouldn't hurt to make one. Everyone else seems to be doing it anyway.

Two days before she turns in her dissertation, two men in suits show up at her door. Her wish comes true.

(On that same day, a boy with curly hair and bright blue eyes also has his wish come true.)

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**I always want to know what you guys think of my stories :)**


	3. it's kind of a funny story

**Here's day 2. I have no beta, so I apologize for any typos. (If anyone's willing, though...)**

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_**Day 2: Unexpected**_

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**it's kind of a funny story**

Their first meeting isn't quite how you'd imagine it.

Jemma sometimes thinks up scenarios, other ways that their paths could have crossed. Maybe she would have met him in class. He would have stumbled in—scrawny, with a pile of paper tucked under his chin, and most likely late—and scanned the lecture hall to find the only empty seat behind or beside her. He would sit down and scramble for his pen, only to realize that he'd forgotten it in his haste to make it to class. He'd tap his shoulder and, because Jemma Simmons is always prepared, she'd hand him her extra pen.

Maybe he'd forget to give it back after class, and he'd try to catch her outside one of their other shared classes to return it to her. Maybe he wouldn't, and he tap on her shoulder again at the end of the lecture and hand her pen out to her with a shy smile and a mumble of thanks. Either way, she'd reply with a smile and say, "keep it, I've got loads more." And maybe he'd return the smile and intentionally make it to class in time to sit next to her for the rest of the week, until they finally have a real conversation.

She imagines that maybe they'd have been paired up in class. Maybe he'd stumble into their Physics lab—late, of course, because he always is—and Professor Linden would call for the class to pair up for a project. While everyone else would be moving about in search for a partner, he'd stay in his seat because he doesn't expect anyone to pick him. And she'd go up to him half out of pity and half out of necessity, since Physics wasn't exactly her field of expertise, and she'd ask him.

Or maybe, once everyone has partnered up, because Jemma doesn't have many close friends of her own, they'd have no choice but to work together. They'd make awkward introductions and their first few days in the lab wouldn't be easy, a lot shifting and bumping elbows and trying to work around each other, but they'd find their footing eventually, getting to know each other in the process.

The only scenario Jemma can't imagine is one where Fitz _doesn't_ stumble his way into her life.

And she wouldn't have it any other way.

Fitz thinks about it too. He thinks maybe someone from the faculty would introduce them. He hadn't exactly been very good at hiding the evidence of cruel freshman "pranks" from anyone. Professor Vaughn had already begun to notice. Maybe he, or one of his other professors, would notice enough to want to try to help him. Maybe they'd think that the best plan of action would be to introduce him to someone who could be his friend. It'd make sense to pick Jemma. They were, after all, the two youngest cadets at the Academy, and both Brits.

Maybe that professor would have called him to their office, and he would have shown up confused and maybe a little nervous that he'd broken some protocol that he wasn't even aware existed yet. Instead he'd find her seated across the professor's desk, looking equally confused albeit much calmer. (He'll learn soon enough that it's because she does no wrong. Jemma Simmons does _not_ get into trouble.) The professor would then introduce them, and she'd hold her hand up to him and smile that smile of hers, and he'd take it and mumble a "nice to meet you." She'd catch his accent and she'd grin wider, and maybe, when he hears her own accent, he'd smile back.

He thinks that maybe, because she's such a kind soul, she would have walked into his life defending him, the way she always does. Maybe on one of those days when the upperclassmen felt particularly cruel, she'd be walking by as they pushed Fitz around. Her footsteps would come to a halt as soon as she hears the taunts, and lay her eyes on this skinny boy being harassed by two or three men. He can almost see her eyebrows furrow in anger. She would march up to them and intervene, her small frame coming between their large ones and his.

She would tell them off, maybe send a threat to be safe. Not that she'd mean it, but they wouldn't know that. Maybe she'd turn to him and see the bruises on his face and give him a small smile. It's always the smile. Maybe she'd offer to check on him and patch him up, and he'd mumble a refusal in his embarrassment. Jemma would, as Jemma does, just roll her eyes and take him by the arm to drag him to her dorm.

Sometimes he still can't believe that she managed to walk into his life, and that she wanted to stay there.

He thanks his lucky stars for it.

There are a dozen more plausible scenarios for their first meeting: like sharing the same spot in the library, bumping into each other on their way to class, being introduced by a mutual friend, a barista getting their orders mixed up at the Starbucks just outside of campus.

Instead, when they first meet, Jemma is in the ladies' room in the Natural Sciences building, and Fitz bursts right in with lipstick and eye shadow badly smeared all over his face.

She jumps, and nearly shrieks when she sees him.

"Hey, hey, hey," Fitz says as quickly as he can, holding his hands up as if just waving them in her face is going to shush her. "Don't scream. I'm not a creep, okay? Please don't scream."

Jemma brings her hand up as if to slap him and Fitz shrinks away immediately, but the hand never leaves its position in the air. "Not a creep?! How the bloody hell am I supposed to believe that?!"

"That's not what this is, okay?" he almost sounds a bit frustrated, and she huffs at his tone, crossing her arms. As if _he_ has the right to feel harassed here?

Fitz takes a moment to peer out the door before turning his attention back to her. "There are… people… after me."

She's still in shock, so her eyebrows scrunch together and she says, "People?"

"The guys who did this," he answers, gesturing to himself. Only then does Jemma notice the bejeweled snap clips in his hair and the skirt over his jeans. "Apparently attacking a person and dressing them up to handcuff to the flagpole out in the courtyard counts as a 'harmless freshman prank'."

She feels a tinge of sympathy and anger then; sympathy for the boy and anger for the bullies who were trying to humiliate him.

"I just—I made a break for it and I ran. I wasn't really looking where I was going," he further explains.

"Well, you can't hide in here," she tells him. She pauses for a moment to appear as if she's genuinely thinking about it, even if she's already made up her mind; she's not going to let them get to him. "You can hide in my dorm."

He looks at her obviously surprised. "It's fine. Y-you don't need to do that."

"I want to," she assures him. "Some of the upperclassmen are just bloody cruel. You shouldn't have to deal with that."

He feels a little embarrassed that this girl is standing up for him when he can't stand up for himself, but the corner of his mouth twitches just slightly at her show of kindness. "Thanks."

"It's nothing—" she says before giving him a questioning look.

"Fitz," he tells her, as if reading her mind.

She smiles. "I'm Jemma. Jemma Simmons."

"Good to meet you, Jemma Simmons." It really is. He smiles back.

"Uh, Fitz?" Jemma says as he reaches for the door. "Don't you want to take that off before leaving?"

He looks down at his appearance and shrugs. "I don't have a bloody clue how to take off the make-up."

She smiles again. "You're lucky you have me now, because I do."

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